Exclusive: US College Professor Identified as Likely Senior Muslim Brotherhood Member

Kuwaiti media has report­ed that in Decem­ber 2020, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood held an online con­fer­ence titled “The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: Facts and Basics” which was aired on the pro-Broth­er­hood TV chan­nel Al-Watan. Accord­ing to a Mug­ta­ma arti­cle:

On Wednes­day, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood launched a vir­tu­al inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence, to clar­i­fy facts about its ide­ol­o­gy, with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of about 40 of the group’s sym­bol­ic and polit­i­cal and reli­gious fig­ures from dif­fer­ent parts of the world. The inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence, which will end tomor­row, Thurs­day, came under the title “The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: Facts and Prin­ci­ples,” and was broad­cast by the “Watan” satel­lite chan­nel, which speaks for the group, and broad­casts from out­side Egypt.

[Trans­lat­ed with Google Translate]

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Accord­ing to the arti­cle and the Al-Watan YouTube chan­nel, many senior lead­ers of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oth­er allied groups apartic­i­pat­ed in the con­fer­ence, including:

• Ibrahim Mounir, Act­ing Gen­er­al Guide of the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Brotherhood

• Abd al-Khaliq al-Sharif, mem­ber of the Gen­er­al Shu­ra Coun­cil of the Mus­lim Brotherhood

• Ismail Ali, mem­ber of the Gen­er­al Shu­ra Coun­cil of the Mus­lim Brotherhood

• Khaled Mashal, for­mer leader of Hamas

• Ali Al-Qaradaghi, Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Mus­lim Scholars

• Anas Al-Tikri­ti, leader of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the UK

• Kamal Al-Khat­ib, deputy leader of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Israel

• Ali Sadr al-Din al-Baya­nouni, for­mer gen­er­al observ­er of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Syria

• Mohied­din Ghazi, Sec­re­tary of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in India

• Azzam al-Ayoubi, Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Lebanon

• Yassin Aktay, deputy chair­man of Turkey’s rul­ing AK party

Also appear­ing on the list of con­fer­ence speak­ers is Moustafa Shahin, iden­ti­fied by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) as a Pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics at Oak­land Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege and the Eco­nom­ics depart­ment at Bak­er Col­lege in Michi­gan. Shahin gave a con­fer­ence speech titled “The Brotherhood’s Role in Con­fronting Crises and Dis­as­ters”. Inves­tiga­tive research by the GIOR sug­gests Shahin has both ide­o­log­i­cal and orga­ni­za­tion­al ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, and his pres­ence at the con­fer­ence indi­cates a lev­el of senior­i­ty with­in the Broth­er­hood. Shahin’s Face­book pro­file illus­trates his ide­o­log­i­cal affil­i­a­tion with the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood: as he has shared state­ments by Broth­er­hood lead­ers and his Face­book Likes  include the pages of many indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with the Broth­er­hood or rad­i­cal Islam, including:

• Egypt­ian Islamist leader Hazem Salah Abu Ismail

• Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Gamal Heshmat

• Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Ashraf Abel Ghaffar

• Egypt­ian Islamist cler­ic Fadel Soliman

• Mau­ri­tan­ian Islamist cler­ic Mohamed El Has­san Ould Dedew

In addi­tion, a Moustafa Shahin is list­ed in Michi­gan state records as hav­ing reg­is­tered the South­field Mus­lim Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter (SMCC) in 2015 at the same address where he reg­is­tered his Eco­nom­ic Con­sult­ing com­pa­ny. Accord­ing to its archived web­site, the SMCC, in turn, was a rebrand­ing of the Islam­ic Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty (IAU), a non-accred­it­ed pri­vate Islam­ic uni­ver­si­ty estab­lished by the Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety (MAS) in the 1990s. Between 1999–2003, the IAU was head­ed by Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fig­ur­er Salah Soltan, a Pro­fes­sor at IAU and a mem­ber of its board of direc­tors. Soltan is a noto­ri­ous anti-Semi­te who in 2015 was sen­tenced to death by an Egypt­ian court over his role In the Egypt­ian MB. In 2017, it was report­ed that he was serv­ing a five-year sen­tence in a max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty prison after his death sen­tence was over­turned by an appel­late court. The IAU board of trustees was head­ed by two senior Mus­lim Broth­er­hood fig­ures, with Mus­lim Broth­er­hood spir­i­tu­al leader Youssef Qaradawi serv­ing as chair­man and US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood leader Jamal Badawi as vice-chair­man.  An online direc­to­ry cur­rent­ly lists Moustafa Shahin as an eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor at IAU.

The Mus­lim Amer­i­can Soci­ety (MAS) was iden­ti­fied in a report authored by the GIOR edi­tor as a part of the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and close­ly tied to the Egypt­ian orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to an inves­ti­ga­tion by the Chica­go Tri­bune, the MAS chose to con­ceal their Broth­er­hood affil­i­a­tion, espe­cial­ly fear­ing that the US would crack­down on Hamas mem­bers. A meet­ing agen­da of the Broth­er­hood Pales­tine Com­mit­tee on July 30, 1994, called on the  MAS to “edu­cate the broth­ers in all work cen­ters, mosques, and orga­ni­za­tions on the neces­si­ty of stop­ping any con­tacts with Zion­ist orga­ni­za­tions and the rejec­tion of any future contacts.”